World of Warcraft Subscriptions Down: Should It Go F2P?

Zach Sharpes discusses the recent earnings call for Activision Blizzard, and their announcement that World of Warcraft has dropped down to 5.6 million subscribers. This is the lowest subscriber count since WoW Vanilla in 2005.

[Helthurian]

Is free-to-play the answer? What do you guys think?

[Sonyslave3]

It still have 5.6mil subs World of Warcraft is fine.

[Roccetarius]

Sub wise it seems fine, but the game itself is not fine. It baffles me how Blizzard can get away with so few content releases in 2015.

[bradfh]

Vanilla (3 year): 20 dungeons - 8 raids.
TBC (1 year): 16 dungeons - 8 raids.
WotLK (1 year): 16 dungeons, 9 raids.
Cataclysm (2 years): 14 dungeons, 6 raids.
MoP (2 years): 9 dungeons , 5 raids.
WoD (2 years): 8 dungeons, 3 raids.

and here is the big reason why

[joab777]

It might as well b/c f2p doesn't mean no subbing. It just means there's a cash shop, and WoW already has one. It would simply boost the numbers and bring ppl back, and many would sub again anyway. And those who sub now would continue to do so

[Roccetarius]

Blizzard can keep this going for at least a few years more, but it's a slow and definite decline of the game. Once it dips below operate costs they'll flip the switch.

[TheGreatGamer]

Bring it to xb1 and ps4, should give the game a boost

[_LarZen_]

I'm not going to pay fees to play a game ever again. So going F2P would make me at least try it again.

[fishy1]

They need to go VR, I would totally get back into it if it was full VR. I'd be raiding 24/7

[STK026]

Still the biggest subscription based MMO, still highly profitable and highly likely to get a couple million subs back for a few months once the next expansion comes out. WoW is dying a slow death, but going F2P right now would do little but slash revenues prematurely.

[Roccetarius]

We won't know for sure how badly it's going for WoW before next report, and if it's below 5 then that's worse than i even imagined. It's obviously declining faster than they intended.

[Clown_Syndr0me]

Jesus I cant beleive its still going. Had no idea, havent played since WOTLK. Damn I lost so many hours of my life...

[kevnb]

It goes down around this time of year, it will go up again for the expansion.

[Summons75]

I think the way ESO did it was the best. Buy the game you have EVERYTHING unlocked but if you really want a subscription you will be rewarded with leveling a tiny bit faster. Let us buy the game and just play it, those who want the subscription can keep and they get benefits faster leveling or something, anything, just don't put a million pay walls up and have a bare bones skeleton available to play like everyone F2P game. F2P is a poison but BNP is just fine.